Voter Suppression In California: Minority Disenfranchisement

Just so there is no confusion: Immigrant, mostly minority workers voted in a state-supervised decertification election because they do not want to be forced to surrender their money and freedom to the UFW. The state of California is actively and willfully suppressing those votes. In the meantime it wants to force, through mandatory mediation, that union contract on the workers and company.

Why would the ALRB do that? Simple: Far from being the impartial arbiter of labor disputes it's supposed to be, the ALRB is nothing but a union enforcer, using the power of the government to herd workers into the smothering embrace of the union.

The board has no interest in seeing the UFW decertified from yet another farm (the union has been bleeding members and money for decades). If the UFW goes extinct, there would be nothing for ALRB busybodies to do. No union, no labor disputes, no need for the ALRB. No wonder Fresno Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Hamilton accused the board of being "in cahoots" with the union.

Why should you care? Because what the government of California is doing to these farm workers is not just a state issue -- it's a national travesty. By not counting these votes, by forcing these workers into an organization against their will (that will then take their money against their will), the ALRB is violating the workers' constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and assembly, and violating them with extreme prejudice.

And so on election night, hundreds of Gerawan workers will hold a silent, candlelight vigil across from the Fresno County Elections Office to mourn the fact that everyone's vote is being counted that night—except theirs.

If both conservatives and liberals are concerned about voter suppression, they will join the workers and demand that the state of California count those votes.

A vote is a sacrament in our democracy, which these workers have offered up in good faith. Time to give them the benediction they deserve.